News

Western Canadian Swine Herd in Excellent Health

24 May 2016

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CANADA - The Veterinary Council with the Canadian Pork Council says the state of health of the western Canadian swine herd has been excellent but veterinarians are reporting some typical seasonal disease challenges.

The Canada-West Swine Health Intelligence Network has released its first quarter report for 2016 on swine health.

Dr Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Council with the Canadian Pork Council, says overall the heath of the western Canadian swine herd remains very stable but there's always a handful of seasonal diseases.

Dr Egan Brockhoff-Canadian Pork Council:

As expected at this time of year we're seeing influenza virus circulate from the farms and so we just want producers to be aware that influenza is moving through the barns.

Influenza can be a very difficult disease to manage in barns and so working with your veterinarian, potentially talking about autogenous vaccination and all the strengths of vaccination would be very important.

Not surprisingly as well we've had some Rotavirus enteritis and that really presents as a diarrhea in piglets and it can be a very difficult disease to manage in farms.

We've had a bit of an issue with vaccine availability in Canada.

That vaccine is back now and your veterinarian should have the ability to get those vaccines out to you again.

Probably the final thing that we've seen the most in this first quarter has been Ergot found in feed and the challenges that that's posing for, in particular, sows and gilt development.

It's something that you very much need to speak with your nutritionist and your feed manufacturer about to ensure there is no or very low safe levels of ergot present in your feedstuffs before you feed them to the pig.

Once that's fed to the pig it knocks animals off feed and can be very difficult to get them back into production after that.

Dr Brockhoff says, the general health of the swine herd has been excellent and veterinarians are happy with what they're seeing out there.